NON-FICTION – FEATURE STORY PROFILE: Lisa Rinna Gets her Mojo Back Big Time

LISA RINNA GETS HER MOJO BACK BIG TIME

by David Lefkowitz

(This article was first published Sept. 2012 in Long Island Woman magazine.)

 

Okay, so you might not have a successful soap opera career, and you might not be married to a heartthrob TV actor, and you might not have a fashion line on a home shopping network, and you might not have posed for Playboy, and you might not be raising a healthy, happy family, but goshdarnit, whatever your situation, you can still improve your sex life.

If you don’t believe me, just pick up “The Big Fun Sexy Sex Book,” a breezy but frank how-to guide penned by relationship counselor Ian Kerner and actress Lisa Rinna, the latter known for her years on “Days of Our Lives” and multitudinous TV hosting gigs, as well as her long-lasting marriage to “L.A. Law’s” Harry Hamlin.  Divided into such sections as “Brave New World: Sex After Kids” and “The Ins and Outs of Porn,” the book doesn’t shy away from fetishes, boundary pushing and advice such as “oral pleasure is totally fine when you’re pregnant.  As with cunnilingus anytime, just be sure that your partner doesn’t blow into your vagina, which can cause an air embolism which can be life threatening for you and your baby.”

Nope, this is no mere pep talk about candelight and quality time.  And if such candor is surprising from a Hollywood celebrity, it’s not entirely unexpected from an actress who Danced with the Stars and even opened up her homelife to a reality TV series.  Reached by phone in late spring, Rinna merrily talked of sex, marriage, media and more.

Did you warn Harry that you’d be coming out with a book that people will inevitably, and not incorrectly, assume is based on what goes on behind your own bedrooms doors?

My husband has been with me now for 20 years, so he knows the scoop.  He knows what he’s getting.  I tend to do things that are outside the box.  I wrote a book in 2008 called “Renovation,” and in one chapter I talked about my losing my mojo and how I got it back.  So Harry said the new book is “an extension of [`Renovation’], and it helps people.” So he was very supportive.

Is your marriage is different in that way from your previous relationships?

I would say one of my earlier relationships was outwardly abusive on some level, which I absolutely allowed.  Which I think we do.  In fact, I think two of them were a bit on the abusive side.  And not the right partner; that happens, too.  Two of my relationships were two of my greatest teachers, but certainly not people I would want to live my life with.  There are times when you pick people in your life for whatever lessons you need to learn.

So what did they teach you?

They taught me a lot about what I want, and how I want to be treated and what positive, good things I want in my life.  And how life can be really quite lovely and easy; it doesn’t have to be torturous.  That’s why we have different relationships, so we can learn what we like and what we dislike.  And they put me in the right direction towards my husband, let’s put it that way.

But here you’ve co-written a book that, some would say, occasionally buys into very pre-Women’s Liberation ideas of sexiness – lingerie, playing dress-up, learning pole dancing –

Sex is still not an issue that people are comfortable with.  I think that’s why it’s kept so private, and that’s why people tend to suffer so silently.  The book is done really well, and it’s brought up a lot of conversation.  But I think people are still really uncomfortable going there, or even thinking about it or addressing it.

Well, you have addressed it fearlessly, and you’ve even posed for Playboy twice – once when six months pregnant.  Would you pose for again?

No, I would not.  I am done with that.  I think that there’s a time and a place for things (laughs), and I’ve done it now, completely and happily, but I would say no.

What about and botox and plastic surgery, which you’ve readily admitted to trying in the past?

Nope, not doing any of it now.  Every woman has tried it in their forties at this point, I would say.  Certainly, every woman in Hollywood.  But not for me, no.

Even though you’ve been a model, actress, and fashionista for more than two decades, have you had body issues trying to be a person in media?

I think, as any woman, yes I did.  I know it sounds crazy, but everything’s relative.  And after having my second child, I really had issues of all kinds.  I felt terrible.  I had an awful post-partum depression.  I didn’t feel good about myself, and I didn’t feel free.  Even though you may come across playing a character that’s a vixen or sexy, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re that in your real life.  Growing up as women, we have so many hangups because we’re told, “You’re not supposed to move your body that way.  Only bad girls do that kind of thing.”  We get a lot of mixed messages, and these are high ideals to live up to – body-wise and what to look like.  I think it’s really quite stressful.

How bad was your depression?

After my second child, my doctor put me on a form of Prozac called Sarafem.  I only took it for about two months; that’s all I needed to re-set my hormonal clock.  But I think the best thing you can ever do is if you’re ever feeling anything out of sorts, you gotta call your doctor.  And then you decide what might be best for you, but that really worked well for me.

Well, things have generally worked out well for you, even if your career path is somewhat the reverse of the usual.  After all, you went from sitcoms into soap operas, rather than the other way around.

I know, right?  I don’t think anything about my career has been normal or pre-planned.  It just happened the way it happened.  I kind of did everything backwards, but it all worked out great.

When I got “The Hogan Family,” which was the sitcom I started out in, it was to play Jason Bateman’s girlfriend. And they had been looking for this character for three months.  They’d seen over 300 actresses.  When I came in and got the part, I never imagined I’d start out doing a comedy, but it was a great place to learn.

The soap opera came after just audition after audition.  I think I screen tested for seven different soaps – and I’d never gotten one.  I really thought, “I have no career in this genre at all; it’s not gonna happen.”  When I went in for “Days of Our Lives,” I’d read for all of them.

Did you prefer soaps to other kinds of television?

The work is all the same – except the pace is fast.  Doing a soap opera is like doing live theater.  You have to know your lines, and you have to move really quickly.  Doing a nighttime show, there are different angles.  You shoot your side, then you go and shoot the other person’s side.  So it’s a much more drawn-out process.  I love the pace of a soap opera because I like doing live TV, live theater, live anything.

Had you done any live theater before you tried Broadway in Chicago?

No, I never had, other than high-school musical theater.  There, I was in Carnival.  I was one of the daughters in Fiddler on the Roof.  And we did Rocky Horror Picture Show – I think I played the Susan Sarandon character.  To be honest with you, I don’t even remember that!

What about acting or dance classes in high school?

I dabbled here and there, and I took a little ballet.  We didn’t have acting classes where I grew up in Medford, Oregon, so I never really took an acting class per se, but I learned how to do a little bit in the musical-theater class in school.

Do you still take classes?

I’m always doing something whether I’m doing a voice class or taking an acting class or a dance class.  Right now, I’m doing “Days of Our Lives,” so that’s my acting class.  In class, I’m taking dancing.

Was that brought on by doing “Dancing with the Stars?”

Absolutely.  My partner [Louis Van Amstel] and I started an exercise dance class after we did “Dancing with the Stars.”  It’s called “LaBlast,” and it’s a ballroom-dance class that you don’t need a partner for.  I let him take over the class because I had too much going on.  Now he has DVDs out, and he teaches classes all over the country at different Crunch Fitnesses.  It’s a great workout and great fun.

And you’re also a big proponent of Sheila Kelley’s S Factor – which involves workouts with a stripper pole?

It really changes your whole attitude about being a woman, your body, and how you move your body.

Would you say you’re something of a fitness junkie?
Yes, I would.  If I’m addicted to anything, I’m addicted to fitness and working out – and have been for, oh my gosh, thirty years! (laughs)

So how often do you exercise?

A little bit of something every day.  I mix it up.  I practice a lot of yoga.  I’ll go to Pilates, I’ll take a spin class, I’ll go for a run, I’ll go for a hike.  To me, it’s like brushing my teeth.

What about your diet?

For me, it’s all about consistency.  It’s all about keeping it to where you never have to lose ten pounds, and you never gain ten pounds.  You just keep your diet consistent.  I try not to do too many things that are not good for you, or are high fat.  It’s common sense.  But I also allow myself – if I want some cookies, or cake, or if I’m eating off the kids’ plates or having a piece of pizza or mac and cheese – which we all do.  It’s just about moderation and getting back on your program the next day.  I am healthy, and I do get checked.  I’m due for my mammogram this month, and I’m due for my physical.  In this day and age, you have to stay on it.

Speaking of staying on it, let’s get back to sex.  What surprised you most while co-writing the “Big Fun Sexy Sex Book”?
I think the choreplay thing.  Making the effort to avoid boreplay or choreplay.  If a man really helps a woman out, she’s more apt to be open sexually.  That was a surprise to me in writing it with Ian.  Ian, being a sex therapist, is very big on that.  Women and men are wired so differently.  After this whole “Fifty Shades of Grey” thing, I think what surprised me most about that book was the S&M section and the things where people take risks to go have sex outside and do it in all kinds of crazy places.  That’s surprising to me.

Have you seen Gilbert Gottfried reading from “Fifty Shades of Grey”?

Oh, it’s gotta be hilarious.  Oh, how funny!

Instead of Mars vs. Venus, you note that men are more like standard transmission cars, while women are more like soufflé?

It’s really true.  Once you can dial into that . . .  It’s really tricky because we both are so different.  We women need a certain thing, and men . . . don’t, so to speak.  Or need a totally different thing.  Getting on the same frequency is a lot of it.  And if your partner can tune into what you need, or if you can be open enough to tell your partner what you need, again, it goes back to communication.  So many marriages don’t make it because of that one thing: they can’t get on the same frequency.

Do you and Harry really follow all the book’s advice about spicing things up, or do you two, too, fall into boreplay and choreplay?

I think we’re just like anybody else.  It falls into all those areas, because we are a very busy, two-person working family, just like millions of people out there.  What I love about the book is that it’s a reminder to stay aware and to stay connected.  To make that intimate connection with your partner is really, really important.  That’s why I like to read so many spiritual books.  I need to be reminded all the time to live in the moment and to do these certain things, or I’ll just go on my crazy, egotistical, narcissistic path which so many of us tend to fall into.  I need those kinds of reminders – especially when it comes to intimate connections with my husband `cause I get so busy.

How did you meet your husband, by the way, on a series?

No, I was working in an eyeglass store!  It was before I got `Days of Our Lives.’  I was working for a friend in an eyeglass store, and Harry just came in to get his glasses fixed (laughs).  It was just, `Hi, how are you?’  And we’d seen each other off and on.  I knew his wife at the time.  Though by the time we started to see each other, he was in the middle – or, divorced.

Did you realize early on he’d be “the one”?

No, no gosh no.  He was “Harry Hamlin.”  He was this actor that I’d known and grown up watching.  I didn’t even think it was a possibility.  He’s 12 years older.  And I thought, “This guy’s so handsome and so nice.”  I didn’t go out with him right away.  We spent about two weeks on the phone; he was in Aspen, and I was up in Oregon over Christmas.  And at first I had no “reality” connection to him, because it just seemed weird.  But then I got to know him by talking to him.  He was very diligent; he called me every single day.  My mom would answer the phone and be like, “Oh my God, Harry Hamlin’s on the phone!”  It was the cutest thing, and it was a good way to start a relationship.

Was the relationship tested when you did “Harry Loves Lisa”?

That was so brief.  Harry and I have worked together many times.  We created that show together, and we were producers of it and had full control over it.  So it was really fun for us, and the kids loved it.  And we really only shot over a two-month period.  It was a blip, but it was a really fun time.

So was it reality?

Oh no, it’s never reality, to be honest with you.  I mean, I wish the cameras could have been rolling all the time.  What happens with these reality shows is that they are scripted television.  They’re just played by the real people.  That’s my opinion and my experience.  We wanted to do the show in a very different way, and the network, being the network, wanted a beginning, a middle and an end every episode, a story.  So to me, it was really like working as an actor but with my family, because there was nothing really “real” about it.

So what is your reality as two working actors raising kids?

You know, it’s a very interesting tightrope that we walk (laughs).  But being actors, the beauty of it is that one of us is always here.  We don’t tend to work at the same time, so somebody’s always home.  And my schedule is so brilliant right now: being able to do “Days of Our Lives,” and then I’ve got the QVC line that I fly to do maybe every six weeks or so.  And Harry’s doing independent films here and there.  So family comes first for us.  It always has, it always will.

Which is what you hope for down the road?

I hope that my children are happy and follow their passion and their dreams.  I hope that everybody stays very healthy, and we continue to be abundant and prosperous, we’re able to give back to charity and to just live a really joyous life.

*

SIDEBAR SHORTIES – (excerpted from lisarinna.com)

Favorite characters she’s played

Roxie Hart in Chicago, Billie Holiday Reed (“Days of Our Lives”)

Favorite quote

“Just do it.”

TV shows on her Tivo

“Cake Boss,” “Say Yes to the Dress,” “Dancing with the Stars”

Favorite travel destination

Tahiti

Career mistakes she wishes she could do over

“I wouldn’t have left so many agents.”

Guiltiest pleasure

Cookies.

*

BYLINE:

David Lefkowitz co-publishes Performing Arts Insider (TotalTheater.com) and hosts Dave’s Gone By (davesgoneby.com) on UNC Radio. He is the co-author and director of the stage show, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon.” Read more at: https://davelefkowitzwriting.wordpress.com/about/.

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FICTION – SHORT STORY: The Chinese Restaurant

category: short fiction

THE CHINESE RESTAURANT

(c)1986 by David Lefkowitz

 

The clear, open smile that radiated from her face assured Simon Wood that she had never lost any relatives in the Second World War. Her slivery darts of eyes and puffed yellow cheeks were too content, too free to be genetically inherited from a work camp detainee. Simon went so far as to reason that Hiroshima and Nagasaki meant more to him as key events in his fascination with historical tragedies than they ever had to her. He approached the fifty-year-old woman without guilt or trepidation and noted that her face looked like a tangerine behind wax paper; a puckering moon with muted wisps of clouds that were the gray tinges delicately aging her hair.

“Can I help you?” she said. Just like they talk in the movies.

Simon leaned against the counter and enjoyed the feeling of cold, smooth metal against his palms. “Do you have a special. Today. Of some sort?” Out of habit and politeness, Simon felt compelled to keep talking until the other person seemed ready to answer.

The finger she pointed at the homemade cardboard `n’ marker sign might have seemed rude had a patient smile not accompanied and, therefore, overwhelmed its dispassionate boldness. The handwriting was as neat, concise, and yet immature as the language:

SPARE RIB (2)

Egg Roll,

Shrimp Fry Rice…….$3.25

For all his previous thoughts and ruminations, it took this simple, frank little sign to jar Simon’s mind into making the distinction that a CHINESE restaurant would not have a JAPANESE waitress. His embarrassed subconscious replaced black-and-white stills of Iwo Jima with luminous, full-color slides of Chairman Mao.

“Um, what else do you have. Do you have anything else . . . uh, on the lunch menu?” Simon would show her that American Catholics could be humble, too.

With automated grace, the increasingly Chinese woman handed him a tiny list of inexpensive combinations, laminated in clear, flexible plastic. The Shrimp Lo Mein instantly caught his eye, though he went through the trouble of reading the entire list in order to avoid any guilty feelings about putting the woman through more trouble in requesting and obtaining the list than in his actual utilization of it. Simon even turned it over, though he instinctively knew it would be blank.

“Lemme have the, uh, shrimp lo mein . . . that’s letter D.”

“That comes with soup. Hot and sour or egg drop?”

“Egg drop.” Why would anyone want to order something that immediately came right out and told you it was hot and sour?

“Three seventy five,” she smiled and gently retrieved her prized menu. Her foreign accent was easily apparent, although somehow she pronounced her “l”s and “r”s with sufficient accuracy. “Will be ready in a few minute. Please have seat.”

After he had received his change, Simon sat down and discreetly checked his wallet. On paying the woman, he noticed uncomfortably that he was carrying less than he thought he was; less than he felt he needed in case minor emergencies or whims cropped up. He’d spent the better part of a twenty in the local drug store earlier that morning, and Simon’s mind flashed to the unopened bag he tossed onto the kitchen table before he went out again. “Eighteen bucks,” thought Simon. “The richest men in America and they can’t even write legibly.”

The Chinese woman was not looking at him. Natural instincts had trained her to stare at anything else in the room besides her customers. Simon observed this same courtesy towards her, though without a meal in front of him, there was nothing much to see, unless one counted oneself a chronicler of the obligatory: the stark white formica table, complete with gold-tinted cardboard ashtray, one gooey bottle of hot sauce, and one near-empty bottle of soy sauce, both made of glass and topped with a red plastic periscope-hole dispenser.

Simon made a mental note to grab three or four napkins from the front counter when he went to get his lunch. He also felt better about his decision to come here as opposed to Wong’s Wok across the street. If the difference between fast and cheap vs. moderate and moderate was an eyedrop of tea in a china cup and a pair of chopsticks, Simon could easily live with his economically based choice.

In their concentrated attempts not to look at one another, Simon and the Chinese woman exchanged glances at least twice, during which Simon smiled the weak smile that says, “Hi. Everything’s good. I’m not rushing you,” to which her broader smile answered in turn, “It will be ready in a minute. My looking at you was a mistake. Please don’t be self-conscious.”

Two attractive Oriental girls, obviously college students, rose from the next table, wiped their mouths, and deposited their respective trays in the nearby wastepaper—no, garbage can—not garbage can—“what do you call those things?” thought Simon, “with plastic tops and the lids that flap back and forth. It’s not garbage cans; those are metal. Receptacles? No, a place like this doesn’t have `receptacles.’”

The girls passed him on their way out, and one had really pretty long black hair. Shiny, as if she had just washed it. Before Simon could engage in any harmless daydream fantasies, they were out of the restaurant and gone. He followed their figures in the mirror that reflected the street and watched them walk a few steps before they disappeared magically into the mirror’s edge.

They had left their table remarkably clean, and it only took the Chinese woman two wipes with her wet rag to finish the job. Simon watched her as she threw the rag on a stool behind the counter and receded into the dark, shabbily curtained hallway which led to (he imagined . . . and hoped) the kitchen. Had he been a dog, Simon figured, this would have been the moment for him to begin his conditioned salivation. The time on the wall clock corroborated to the minute the time on Simon’s wristwatch, yet he check both repeatedly and would check them again throughout the meal.

Upon seeing the Chinese woman return with a lightly steaming tray of colorful food, Simon uncontrollably flashed back to the menu and suffered the mild panic of wondering whether he had really chosen the right dish after all. The possibility of substituting beef for shrimp had not occurred to him then and, happily, passed quickly and left no disappointing impression on him now. Neither did the tempting spare ribs, which, he reasoned, were probably greasy and devoid of more than one mouthful of meat if scraped together collectively.

Simon delicately lifted the tray from her small rough hands and nodded the way he nodded to all bearers of service, especially Oriental ones. “Enjoy your meal,” she said, making the phrase sound only vaguely like a cliche. As nice as the woman was, it didn’t stop the unspoken response that usually popped into Simon’s head upon hearing that phrase from reintroducing itself: “Well, you prepared it. If it’s any good, I’ll enjoy it. Don’t make your preparation my responsibility.”

“Thanks,” was the only word that actually left Simon’s lips.

It was exactly 2:47.33 when Simon began his meal. He had forgotten the napkins, and his instant correction of that error added 25 seconds to his starting time. Not that he was really in a rush; rather that to Simon, fast food restaurants were for eating fast as well as being quickly served. Any other combination of speed and pace would be jarring and unsettling the type of food that needs all the settling it can get.

Simon dipped a plastic spoon into the soup, expecting it to melt into a curvaceously Dali-esque creation. Not to be second-guessed, however, the spoon obstinately maintained its shape and filled itself with the runny yellow consommé. He blew twice onto the soup and gingerly let it slide into his mouth, vowing thereafter to blow three times. After the sting had left his tongue, Simon decided that the soup was excellent. He would have called it “authentic” had he been able to distinguish authentic originals from their American copies.

As he waded through the murky soup, Simon fixed on authenticity as a time-passing topic of contemplation. He tried to invent distinguishable boundaries: loneliness being authentic, as is lust; boredom and passion being only carbon copies of real emotion. Despair is wholly authentic, ennui not at all, and angst is the misbegotten son of their marriage. Occupied with these pointless intellectual pursuits, Simon Wood finished his egg drop soup quickly, sipping the last quarter cup the way people eating alone always do.

The first thing Simon noticed about his shrimp lo men was the surprising number of shrimp in it. They were small—assuming that anything called a shrimp could be large—like the shriveled pinkies of emaciated old men. Simon glanced at the mirror to view a street that seemed somewhat darker, colder looking, than when he had first entered the tiny establishment. A stocky Hispanic whizzed by on a bright red Schwinn, the kind Simon had had when he was a child, only blue. A couple in their mid-twenties strolled by, never taking their eyes off each other. The woman wasn’t terribly attractive, but when she moved to kiss her lover, Simon snapped his head back to his plate and forced himself to think about something else

Picking off a severed bit of noodle that tenaciously clung to his lower lip, Simon devoted a few seconds to answering honestly how he felt about American foreign policy. Dismissing the problem as too complex to fathom over lunch, and the solution too simple to bother with on this particular afternoon, Simon dropped the subject, forked a shrimp, and turned his head to the waitress. She had piled before her several dozen fresh stringbeans and was deftly removing her tips and tops. She never looked at the particular green she was cutting—she obviously didn’t have to—and she didn’t look at Simon, either. He was therefore able to stare at her for a few seconds before restoring his gaze to his half-finished plate.

Although his stomach began to feel the mellowing sensation of fullness, Simon obliged his habit of eating as much as he could, within reason, when he paid to dine in a restaurant or on those rare occasion when he played the guest to a friendly host. The portion wasn’t huge to begin with, and Simon began to see the white of the plate beneath the greasy cellophane strings of lo mein. “Adequate, if dry and somewhat bland,” thought Simon. All things are, to an extent.

Because he had forgotten to ask for duck sauce early on, Simon felt foolish about asking the Chinese lady for some now, as he was so near the completion of his meal. He shook a little soy sauce onto the neuron-like tangle of noodles that remained, and it helped a bit. The clock read one minute after three o’clock as Simon eased the final ounce into his mouth. It had been a satisfying meal, and Simon congratulated himself on spending his precious time and money so wisely.

For some reason, the Chinese woman seemed more like a stranger to Simon now than when had first walked in. And when she called to him from behind the curtain, asking him with her eyes if the meal was good, and with her voice if he wanted any dessert, he reacted as if some unknown force had inexplicably intruded into the private world of his thoughts and planned actions.

“Thanks,” Simon raised his palm and timidly cast his eyes to the floor. “It was very good.”

The woman smiled the same broad smile with which she had greeted her customer thirty minutes before and then vanished into the black hallway, assumedly to collect another pile of stringbeans.

Simon rose and pulled the heavy down jacket off the back of his chair. The zipper caught several times before he could close it properly, and Simon cleared his throat authoritatively when he had accomplished the task. Bussing his tray, Simon decided on “garbage” as the operative word for the special lid-capped waste bin and gripped the plate tightly so as not to let it fall irretrievably beyond his reach.

It wasn’t as if he was waiting for the Chinese woman to return—she didn’t—when he stopped at the door and took one last quick look around. What was there to see that he hadn’t already observed in his short tenure at the restaurant? The stack of take-out menus, the simple, framed-ink drawings discreetly placed on the walls, the absence of table cloths, the profusion of metal surfaces, smooth and cold, the bright light, the sudden quiet. Simon gripped the door handle and pushed.

Not more than two seconds later, the Chinese woman returned, carrying not stringbeans but refills for the napkin holder. Without so much as a glance at the slowly closing door, she put the bending pile down and snatched the washrag. Silently, she moved to his table and wiped it until nothing remained to hint that anyone had ever been there.

Simon walked quickly back to his apartment, making good time despite a troublesome light on the corner of the Chinese restaurant’s block.

He needed only one glass of water to swallow the pills, though he gagged a little in the beginning. Simon lay down on the couch and tried not to think about anything. This failing him, he closed his eyes and tried to picture the woman in the Chinese restaurant. Already her features had become vague, her movements indistinct. It was twenty minutes to four when Simon Wood finally fell asleep.

When his heart stopped beating an hour later, it was almost as an afterthought.

*

NOTES & BACKSTORY:

The first draft of the story was completed Feb. 5, 1984, with revisions done two years later and the final draft completed Jan. 24, 1986. Despite a preponderance of unnecessary adjectives, there is much about this story I still like, 30-plus years later. I can read through it and find felicitous phrases I actually remember writing—always a good sign. And I like how the minutiae always have an undercurrent of both comedy and dread. Whether it’s New Yorker-worthy… ehhhhmmmm… I wouldn’t say no if they asked.

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